Ingredients! *It's OFFICIAL*

Last night... we received the phone call... We have OFFICIALLY been matched... woohoo... Joe and I honestly couldn't be any happier with our match!  Feeling pretty blessed...

I have had a few friends as me about how the girls feel about this... or if they even understand it... well... I seem to think they do, in a sense.

I saw a blogger friend explained it to her kids in a baking sense (like an apple pie...)  I, however, likened it to baking cookies.

We sat down and I explained to the very intrigued six year old and seven year old inquisitive minds.  It's like baking cookies.  Before you get to enjoy the cookies you have to make them first.  You first preheat the oven. In EVERY cookbook that's the very first step!

 Then..you go to all the hard work of getting together all the ingredients.  Things like the eggs, oil, water, flour, chocolate chips, etc.  You get out the mixer or grab a spoon and start mixing the ingredients together...all of this you do in hopes and expectations of getting to enjoy the outcome of some wonderful, warm, gooey cookies.




You get them all prepared on a baking sheet, just far enough apart from each other.... all about the same size... and you pop them into the oven, and then you set the timer and wait.  As kids, of course, they turn on the light to check the progress... but nothing is happening... in fact something isn't right, the oven isn't hot at all, which is odd... it's supposed to get hot right??  You check and make sure you turned the oven on.... Yes, I swear I did... chimes someone.  Ok, you push preheat again... only this time... you realize it's not working.  It may be obvious... electricity is out?  It may not be obvious... the stove top works but not the oven???  Whatever the case may be... the oven is not working.  Here you sit... with your cookies WAITING to be baked and enjoyed... what do you do?  Do you drive to a friends house, call a repair man, knock on the neighbor's door???  Or do you just give up....

It's the best way to explain it to the girls.  I have an oven that has worked for four wonderful girls already... We have met an amazing couple who have the ingredients... together we can make some cookies.  Now the cookies aren't ours.. they get that... (in fact they are pretty relieved... neither of them want another Ollie or Charley monster any time soon...)  I even think they might be excited as well.  Emery overheard me tell Joe the good news about becoming officially matched and I said "I'm so excited..." and she wanted to know why.. and I said we were matched with a couple to have a baby for, and they liked us and so we have decided to do it.  She grinned and got excited to and said she told her friends at school (oh if I were a fly on the wall for that one...)  Anyway.... kids are kids... they ask questions... but they ask the questions adults think of but don't have the guts to ask ;)  So.  This visual was great for them... can't wait to bake some cookies for M & M.